Judge Slams Trump Lawyers’ Shady Behavior in Deportation Case

A federal judge questioned the Department of Justice Friday over Donald Trump’s “expanded” use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport planefuls of immigrants without due process over the weekend.

During a hearing, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg said that Trump’s invocation of the centuries-old wartime law to declare the Tren de Aragua gang an invading force was “unprecedented,” and that the policy ramifications were “troublesome and problematic and concerning,” according to Politico’s senior legal correspondent Kyle Cheney, who documented the hearing in a thread of posts on X.

Boasberg explained that the Trump administration’s application had “expanded” the AEA’s use, whereas in other instances that the law has been invoked, such as during the War of 1812, World War I, and World War II, “there was no question there was a declaration of war, and who the enemy was,” according to Cheney.

Notably, the United States is not at war with Venezuela.

The judge said that the Trump administration’s application of the AEA was “a long way from the heartland” of the rule, according to journalist Adam Klasfeld.

Lawyers from the ACLU and Democracy Forward had challenged Trump’s use of the wartime law Saturday, asserting that several individuals the government claimed were gang members had been wrongly identified. Boasberg then ordered the Trump administration to temporarily pause deportations under the AEA, but the government continued with the removal of more than 250 individuals.

The Trump administration has refused to reveal the identities of those who were deported or any information on how immigration and customs authorities were able to determine that they were in fact gang members.

During the hearing Friday, ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt claimed that the deported Venezuelans were not given a “meaningful” chance to contest their designation as terrorists, and urged that future deportees should receive the opportunity to argue for their innocence, according to Cheney.

The Department of Justice said that habeas petitions would be made available to deportees to challenge their designation under the AEA, but it was unclear how they would fulfill those petitions if they were similarly rushed out of the country.

Boasberg implied that the Trump administration had been anxious to speed along the removal of the alleged gang members, signing the order to do so “in the dark.”

“It seems to me the only reason to do that is if you know it’s a problem and you want to get them out of the country before there are suits filed,” Boasberg said, according to Cheney.

Donald Trump bragged about releasing the Social Security numbers of hundreds of people during his anticlimactic release of the John F. Kennedy assassination files.

“Eighty thousand pages of documents is a lot to sift through,” a reporter said to Trump on Friday. “Can you just tell us who killed Kennedy?”

“Well, you know, I was given the task of releasing that. Many presidents have gone through it, and they haven’t released. And I said, ‘Release.’ We even released Social Security numbers, I didn’t want anything deleted,” Trump replied. “They said, ‘So what about Social Security?’ People long gone.… We gave Social Security, we gave everything. And the rest is for you to look at.”

These Social Security numbers are from potentially hundreds of people who are alive, not “long gone,” as the president wrongly claimed.

One of them, Reagan-era Justice Department attorney and Trump’s own former campaign lawyer Joseph diGenova, was furious about the release of his personal data. “I intend to sue the National Archives,” he told USA Today. “They violated the Privacy Act.”

A former Church Committee staffer also slammed Trump.

“Your Administration doxxed former public servants who staffed 1977-79 congressional investigation by revealing their SSNs. Many are still alive. Completely unnecessary & contributed nothing to JFK assassination understanding,” government accountability lawyer Mark Zaid wrote on X. “I trust you will provide them free credit monitoring.”

The federal government and its agencies are barred from sharing personal records without consent under the Privacy Act of 1974.

The Department of Homeland Security shut down its office in charge of investigating civil rights complaints on Friday.

DHS closed its Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, which was created along with the department in 2002 to advise leadership on civil rights and liberties and to investigate agency complaints on everything from disaster response to immigration enforcement. Its 90 employees were told they will be paid through May 23.

There’s no word on whether the functions of the office will be transferred elsewhere, or what will happen to its $22 million in funding. But it comes as no surprise, considering the Trump administration’s efforts to reduce or eliminate oversight and civil rights offices in other departments. The civil rights division in the Justice Department, for example, has been directed to serve conservative culture-war aims, and much of its other work has been frozen.

The fact that the DHS’s office handles complaints against Immigration and Customs Enforcement was almost certainly a strike against it under this administration, which seeks to fast-track mass deportations regardless of complaints. To hard-line anti-immigration people on the right, civil rights and liberties are just further obstacles to getting rid of as many legal and undocumented immigrants as they can.

At the start of Trump’s second term, his campaign promise of fast-tracking mass deportations raised concerns that legal protections would be disregarded and civil rights violations would skyrocket as more immigrants were detained. Now that appears to be coming true, and getting rid of an office that would investigate those violations is certainly by design.

A federal judge tore into Justice Department lawyers Friday as they struggled to defend Donald Trump’s order banning transgender people from serving in the military. 

U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes said that she would not be “gaslit” by the lawyers’ attempts to convince her that the policy did not constitute a transgender ban, according to Politico’s senior legal affairs reporter Kyle Cheney.

“You’re saying one thing in public. You’re saying a different thing in court,” Reyes said, referring to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s post on social media that referred to the policy as a ban. 

Earlier this week, Reyes had ruled that the Pentagon could not enforce the policy and had mischaracterized research and ignored evidence to support its conclusion to disallow transgender service members. Last week, Reyes stopped a hearing cold in its tracks so that the lawyers could actually read the studies mentioned, after she found that “virtually every” study cited in the ban contradicted support for Hegseth’s policy.

The judge noted in her ruling that the defense agreed that transgender people “can have the warrior ethos, physical and mental health, selflessness, honor, integrity, and discipline to ensure military excellence,” and that the government’s claims about their suitability for service were “pure conjecture.”

She delayed the order from going into effect until March 21, to give the Trump administration enough time to pursue an emergency appeal. 

In a new filing Friday, the Department of Justice asked Reyes to dissolve her preliminary injunction. Lawyers argued against her interpretation of Hegseth’s policy disqualifying service members who “have a current diagnosis or history of, or Exhibit symptoms consistent with, gender dysphoria.” The lawyers claimed this rule did not “discriminate against trans-identifying persons as a class.”

Reyes hit back at the lawyers during Friday’s hearing, pushing them to explain how Hegseth’s policy was addressing an actual problem in the U.S. military and not simply creating a “pretext” for discriminating against transgender people, according to Cheney.  

The judge noted there were already policies in place that required military officials to identify people with debilitating medical conditions—which would include those with gender dysphoria that rendered them unable to serve.

“Everything in the record is that it’s a pretext. There is nothing in the record that this was a deliberative process,” Reyes said. 

Will U.S. marching bands be replacing “God Bless America” with “God Save the King”?

Donald Trump had a bizarrely warm reaction to news that Britain’s King Charles would extend a “secret offer” for the United States to join the British Commonwealth, something that the Founding Fathers fought and died to exit nearly 250 years ago.

“I Love King Charles. Sounds good to me!” Trump posted on Truth Social Friday, recirculating the story.

It was not clear if Trump was serious or making an odd joke, but several U.K. outlets have reported that the unprecedented offer of “associate membership” is very much real. The Commonwealth is a volunteer association of 56 nations. The majority of them share history as former British colonies, including Canada, India, and Australia.

Charles is the head of the Commonwealth, as well as king of 15 of its member states. Five other members have different monarchs ruling over them, and 36 other members are republics.

The Daily Mail reported that the first extension of the hand-written offer was delivered to Trump by U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer during a visit to the White House last month.

A member of the Royal Commonwealth Society spoke with the Mail on the condition of anonymity about the matter, claiming that America’s potential entry into the Commonwealth was being discussed “at the highest levels.” They believed it would be “a wonderful move that would symbolize Britain’s close relationship with the U.S.”

“Donald Trump loves Britain and has great respect for the Royal Family, so we believe he would see the benefits of this. Associate membership could, hopefully, be followed by full membership, making the Commonwealth even more important as a global organization,” the person added.

As strange as the offer is, it could be an attempt by Charles to quell Trump’s hostility toward long-standing Western alliances as Europe braces for potential war with Russia.

Trump has continually agitated and aggravated America’s allies, positioning the nation as more of a global bully than a policeman, forcing some of America’s friends to reconsider the value of its military protection. Some of those injuries include Trump’s shocking hostility toward Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy during critical peace negotiations, his nonsensical trade war, his threats to annex Greenland, his whiplash decisions to suspend and un-suspend military resources and intelligence with Kyiv, his venom toward NATO, and his insistence on making Canada the nation’s fifty-first state.

The Trump administration is moving to deport another international student for speaking out against the U.S.-funded genocide in Palestine.

One day after Cornell Ph.D. student Momodou Taal, who has dual U.K. and Gambian citizenship, reported unidentified law enforcement agents outside his home, the Justice Department emailed him and his lawyers asking the graduate student to come to ICE headquarters for his detainment.

Taal was suspended for participating in anti-Zionist protests on campus last year. On Sunday, he sued the Trump administration on the grounds that two executive orders used to detain innocent student-activists like Mahmoud Khalil violate the First and Fifth Amendments of the Constitution.

Days later, Taal said unidentified agents were outside of his house trying to intimidate him into turning himself in.

“This morning, shortly after a federal judge scheduled a hearing in my lawsuit demanding the courts strike down Trump’s executive orders attacking free speech, law enforcement from an unidentified agency came to my home in Ithaca, New York. I believe they planned to detain me,” Taal wrote on X. “Trump is attempting to detain me to prevent me from having my day in court.… This is part of a continued pattern in the Trump administration’s flagrant disregard for the judiciary.”

Taal’s lawyers then submitted a motion to stop the government from “attempting to detain, remove, or otherwise enforce the two executive orders against Mr. Taal.”

The Justice Department’s email to Taal on Thursday seems to be a way to get around his motion for a temporary restraining order.

“My guess is that someone in ICE told DOJ they were going to do this and DOJ said ‘hey if you grab this guy at his house with no warning while he has a pending TRO, that is going to piss off the judge, so let’s let him surrender instead,’” American Immigration Council Senior Fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick wrote on X.

The Trump administration is still working to detain Taal.

“I will not be intimidated,” Taal said in a statement Thursday. “Am I worried at times? Of course. Am I stressed beyond anything I’ve experienced before? Most definitely. But I cannot, in good conscience, remain silent.”

The Trump administration is so worried about judicial scrutiny over its deportation flights to El Salvador that officials are thinking about misusing the “state secrets privilege.”

Notus reports that Todd Blanche, the number two person at the Justice Department and Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer, revealed as much in a court filing Friday. Specifically, he said that he had “direct involvement in ongoing Cabinet-level discussions regarding invocation of the state-secrets privilege.”

The fact that invoking the privilege is under consideration in the White House suggests that what actually happened is damning for the administration, and a negative ruling could seriously blunt Trump’s immigration powers. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg is trying to find out exactly when the flights from the United States to the Central American country took off and whether officials were aware of a court order blocking the deportations at the time.

Since Boasberg’s court order on Saturday, he has been vilified by Trump, Elon Musk, and several other right-wing personalities, all of whom have made threats against him and called for his impeachment. New reports have also revealed that many of the immigrants rounded up and placed on the flight were not violent criminals or gang members, as administration officials claim. Many deportees simply had distinctive tattoos.

In addition to attacks on Boasberg’s credibility, the administration has also made the bizarre argument that the judge’s oral order carries less weight than a written one, and begun attempts to get the judge removed from the case by an appellate court. The threats to Boasberg even prompted Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts to issue a rare statement of condemnation.

Trump has pulled out the rarely cited Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to justify the flights, which were only possible thanks to Secretary of State Marco Rubio cutting a deal with the country’s autocratic president, Nayib Bukele, to send them to facilities accused of engaging in torture. If the administration tries the state secrets privilege next, it will only deepen the ongoing constitutional crisis.

A Big Law associate has issued a scathing resignation letter after a different firm—Paul, Weiss—chose to bend to Donald Trump’s blatant bullying. 

Rachel Cohen, an associate at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, circulated her strongly worded “conditional notice” of resignation to her colleagues Thursday evening.

“Please consider this email my two week notice revocable if the firm comes up with a satisfactory response to our current moment,” Cohen wrote in the email, which had the subject line “With gratitude and urgency.” 

Cohen’s resignation came just hours after the Trump administration rescinded an executive order revoking the security clearances of lawyers at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, in response to the firm pledging it would provide $40 million in free legal services on cases “that represent the full spectrum of political viewpoints of our society.”

Trump’s executive order had targeted Paul, Weiss over the work of one former employee, Mark Pomerantz, a former prosecutor who previously oversaw the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office’s investigation into Trump’s alleged financial crimes. As part of bowing to Trump’s threat, the firm acknowledged that Pomerantz had committed wrongdoing. 

The firm also agreed to stop making decisions about hiring and promotions based on considerations of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Cohen’s email included a list of conditions her firm should execute “at a minimum” to respond to Paul, Weiss’s decision to fold under pressure from the administration. 

Cohen urged her firm to sign an amicus brief in support of Perkins Coie, the law firm that represented Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. Trump accused Perkins Coie of “dishonest and dangerous activity” in an executive order last week, suspending the firm’s security clearances and barring federal employees from engaging with firm members. A judge temporarily blocked parts of Trump’s order, saying that it likely violated the firm’s First, Fifth, and Sixth Amendment rights. 

Cohen called on Skadden Arps to commit to “broad future representation” and publicly commit to continue the firm’s affinity groups and other diversity initiatives.  

She also wrote that the firm should refuse requests for information on employees “clearly targeted at intimidating nonwhite employees,” and publicly refuse to fire employees at the behest of the Trump administration.

“This is not what I saw for my career or for my evening, but Paul Weiss’ decision to cave to the Trump administration on DEI, representation and staffing has forced my hand. We do not have time. It is now or it is never, and if it is never, I will not continue to work here,” Cohen wrote. 

Last week, Cohen organized an open letter criticizing the Trump administration for trying to “bully corporate law firms out of engaging in any representation that challenges the administration’s aims,” garnering more than 300 anonymous signatures from Big Law associates. 

Cohen told Politico that she hoped to see a “critical mass” of major firms publish statements expressing their willingness to represent “all sides of the coin,” even if one side went against Trump. 

“It is imperative for rule of law in this country that lawyers not be associated with the interests that they represent or not have those imputed to them,” Cohen told Politico. “Because if we don’t have that and we have a vindictive government at the federal level targeting attorneys for providing representation, then we don’t have checks and balances. We don’t have the judiciary or the court system in the way that it’s intended to function.”

In caving to Trump’s threats, Paul, Weiss established a price Big Law firms will have to pay to keep their security clearances: $40 million … and their integrity. Its decision to bow down to the administration marks other firms that take up cases challenging the administration as vulnerable to Trump’s lawless, punitive actions. It also invites the question, if major firms like Paul, Weiss won’t stand up to Trump’s punitive and targeted executive orders, who will? 

More bad news for Elon Musk and Tesla: Nearly every single Cybertruck is being recalled because the large panel near the front of the truck’s body falls off while in motion.

The recall covers 46,000 Cybertrucks on the road, or every car made from November 13, 2023, when the Cybertruck was first released, to February 27.

The panel, known as a cant rail assembly, is attached to the truck with an adhesive that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration describes as susceptible to “environmental embrittlement.”

“If the cant rail stainless steel panel separates from the vehicle while in drive, it could create a road hazard for following motorists and increase their risk of injury or a collision,” Tesla wrote, while also claiming it is “not aware of any collisions, fatalities or injuries that are or may be related to the condition.” Musk’s company says the defect only impacts 1 percent of Cybertrucks.

This comes as Tesla stocks are collapsing, losing half their value in the wake of Musk’s DOGE purges and his Seig heil-ing. There was also an attack in Las Vegas earlier this week that resulted in multiple empty Teslas blowing up. “It’s just fully terrorism at this point,” Musk wrote on X. “This level of violence is insane and deeply wrong. Tesla just makes electric cars and has done nothing to deserve these evil attacks,” he continued, infantilizing his massive company.

This is the eighth Cybertruck recall since the car’s release.

Donald Trump announced a new investment in military aircraft production Friday, revealing that he had contracted Boeing to develop “the world’s first sixth-generation” fighter jet, named the F-47. And he managed to threaten America’s allies in the process.

“It’s something the likes of which nobody has seen before, in terms of all of the attributes of a fighter jet, there’s never been anything even close to it, in terms of speed to maneuverability to payload,” Trump said during the Oval Office press briefing.

The pseudo-advertisement for the forthcoming fleet followed a tumultuous week for America’s military industrial complex, in which U.S. arms-makers were shut out of the European Union’s $800 billion defense spending plan. It also came after Canada and Portugal revealed they were similarly wobbling on whether to replace their aging air forces with American-made products.

By all means, the reveal of the F-47 needed to go well for America’s stressed defense industry—but Trump couldn’t stop himself from throwing water on the pitch.

“Our allies are calling constantly, they want to buy them all,” Trump continued, before claiming that America’s allies would get “toned-down versions.”

“We like to tone them down about 10 percent, which probably makes sense because someday maybe they’re not our allies, right?” the president said.

Foreign sales are crucial to the American arms industry, but Trump’s repeated aggression against America’s strongest alliances has made world leaders waver on whether the continued investment is worth it.

The sales pitch from American arms manufacturers simply isn’t as persuasive as it was under previous administrations. For decades, purchasing American fighter jets and weapons came with an added bonus of U.S. protection. But as global leaders have witnessed Trump defy long-standing military treatises and aggress U.S. allies, that promise no longer feels like a guarantee.

Trump’s shocking hostility toward Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy during critical peace negotiations, his nonsensical trade war, his threats to annex Greenland, his whiplash decisions to suspend and un-suspend military resources and intelligence with Kyiv, his venom toward NATO, and his insistence on making Canada the nation’s fifty-first state have all called the reliability of American protection into question.